“A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand’, but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room.” – Edward Bernays

Guy Evans examines Chapter 3 of Edward Bernays’ seminal text ‘Propaganda’. In this chapter, ‘The New Propagandists’, Bernays characteristically boasts that the public are not aware of the ‘invisible rulers’ that control elected figureheads behind the scenes. He suggests that public opinion must be molded by the ‘intelligent few’, and argues that in many aspects of our daily lives, we are influenced by deceptive trend-setters that manipulate our desires and cause us to make uninformed, irrational choices. Enjoy the podcast and share with a friend!

Click here to download this podcast

Smells Like Human Spirit is a DAILY podcast that covers society, culture, and everything in between! Previous guests include Professor Noam Chomsky, Dan Carlin, Michael Ruppert and many others…

Chapter 3 Transcript – “The New Propagandists”

Propaganda

WHO are the men who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities, about the tariff, about the price of rubber, about the Dawes Plan, about immigration; who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve on our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at? Continue reading →